Every plant has its own story to tell
You will never take breeds for granted after discovering their hidden depths, clever ways and fascinating roles, both ancient and modern
WITHOUT plants we would perish, without plants we would not exist – they are the lungs of our planet, cleansing its air and making life viable for every creature on Earth.
Plants have been inextricably linked with humankind throughout our existence on the planet and our fates are inseparably intertwined. But not just in our most straightforward relationship where they provide us with our food, where their leaves, stems, seeds and fruit are eaten by us and by the animals we keep.
It is not just that they give us shelter nor that we clothe ourselves with products derived from them. From ancient myth to modern drugs, they affect so many facets of our existence.
They were an integral part of the everyday poetry of life – the basis of folklore and legend, of magic and superstition. On a more visceral level, they were food for man and beast and source of almost all medicine. Still today, more than 70% of our medicines are derived from them.
In our gardens, the plants we think of as being “civilised” – our cultivated flowers – were all at some stage, and still are, other people’s wild flowers.
In many cases, they had been civilised, developed and cultivated in the countries where they originate long before they journeyed to our gardens.
There are certain plants that are iconic – almost everyone recognises them. Four of them – the rose, tulip, iris and water lily – are the starting point of my new TV show: Carol Klein’s Plant Odysseys.
Their image is set, stationary, yet their evolution, their history and the voyages they made around the world is anything but static. Though seldom acknowledged, it involves astonishing facts, intrepid journeys, exciting adventures.
Every plant in our gardens has its own story to tell. Each has made its own journey, has its own history, geography and special significance to us.
What makes them so special? What characterises each one and gives it its own unique personality?
For gardeners, such plants are part of their repertoire and for most of us, gardeners or not, they are part of our consciousness.
Whether or not we grow them we tend to take them for granted and imagine they had always been here. But what are their secrets, their significance, where do they come from, how did they get here and how do you grow them? What are their stories – their odysseys?
Plant Odysseys – a BBC2 fourparter – recognises that each plant’s central character is beguiling.
We hope you’ll feel as though, during the course of half an hour, you are not only introduced to the plant but you get to know it intimately.
Even flowers you thought you knew are revealed as intriguing individuals with hidden depths, with backgrounds and histories – significance you may never have dreamed of.
We trace the journeys they have made, meet the people who became fascinated by them then and those who are obsessed with them today.
Many millions of years before mankind was on the Earth, these flowers peopled the planet. How and why did they take the forms they have? How did they evolve, changing and adapting over millions of years? THE first episode last Monday night looked at the rose. It was amazing to discover that roses have been around for 37 million years.
The first were climbing roses that used their thorns (not really thorns but prickles – a collection of bristles) to hoick themselves up to the top of trees and simultaneously to ensure they didn’t get eaten.
Prickles also harbour bacteria to fend off hungry assailants. Their scent draws in pollinating insects through odour plumes and they also emit chemical messages to attract predators like hoverflies to help with aphis problems.
Roses have meant an enormous amount to all the ancient civilisations and continue to have significance in today’s world.
We foundnd out what the Romans did for rose cultivation and how new roses are created today.
At Exeter cathedral we learnt to understand the part the rose has played in our own culture as well as that of civilisations and religions worldwide. THE second programme to be aired on Monday looks at our most popular garden bulb – the tulip.
Although we visit the Netherlands – the place we usually associate with tulips – we also travel to the snowcapped mountains of eastern Turkey, where we come across Tulipa armena, one of the early ancestors of those we grow in our gardens.
It flourishes in this inhospitable environment having evolved various survival strategies. Thermal imaging reveals how warm air trapped inside the petals helps the pollen to flow and gives visiting insects a place to rest.
The tulip made extraordinary journeys eastwards from its mountain homes and we visited Istanbul to find out how it influenced the Turks and the Ottomans but also how the part they played in changing its form. In the Netherlands, we explore the influence the tulip had on its economy but also its importance today in world commerce There are majestic aerial views of acre upon acre of tulips. The third episode looks at the Iris – named after the Greek goddess of the rainbow. I get up close and personal, acting like a bee and using an endoscopic camera to explore its hidden depths.
We reveal how insects with UV vision see an iris flower with pollen guides – markings on the petals barely perceptible to us. We had great fun in a vineyard in Perugia finding out how important orris root has been and still is as a constituent in perfume manufacture.
Still in Italy, we visit the Iris garden in Firenze. For centuries, the iris has been the symbol of Florence.
We travel to Turkey to learn its importance in Muslim funeral ceremonies and discover it had similar significance in the culture of Ancient Greece. I’m lucky enough to meet up with gardener Sarah Cook and come face to face with irises bred by artist and plantsman Cedric Morris, depicted in his paintings and growing “in the flesh” in Sarah’s beautiful garden. IN the fourth and final episode we move from the land and into the water. The water lily is a plant of unlikely economic importance, spiritual significance and artistic inspiration.
I travel to South Korea and see at first hand a water lily that hasn’t changed for 130 million years. Water lilies were among the very first flowers on Earth. They have one of the most interesting sex lives of any flower, involving temperature and colour changes and turning perfume on and off – and all this in the middle of the night in the dark.
I join an Amazonian water lily in its murky aquatic environment to uncover this iconic plant’s ingenious adaptations and its unique pollination methods.
These are all glimpses into the fascinating lives of these marvellous plants and I hope their stories and the programmes’ revelations will enthral you as much as they did me.
Carol Klein’s Plant Odysseys is on Mondays at 7pm on BBC2